Showdown!

IntroductionLobsterman promised an exciting who's who of my training buddies, all in one day, in the same place, doing the same race. It was the showdown I'd been waiting for all summer. I will do my best, but I'll warn you now that this will not be a short race report. Sorry. First, let's introduce the cast of characters:

Mary, aka Iron Matron: Most of you know her. If you don't know her, you should go read her blog and get to know her. She's blazing fast, and the only one that I knew I didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of beating to a bloody pulp.

From left to right: Michelle, Alison (hey, if I had abs like that I would never put on a shirt either!), me, and Anne (who does not ALWAYS have crazy Einstein hair like that!)

Alison, aka the best swim buddy in the whole, wide world. If you've been stalking me on my training log, you may have heard of Alison. We swim at almost exactly the same speed but in adjacent lanes, so every freestyle set turns into a race. At first it was just about raw speed, but then pacing and tactics worked their way in, and there's always an exciting sprint finish. No one looks better in a bikini than Alison, and she'll charm your swim cap off, but swimming back and forth across the pool she will set a blistering pace and she will not let go. Alison completes me as a swimmer, and any swimming gains I've made this year are from trying to beat her to the wall.

Michelle, training partner and accidental running coach. I told you guys about her that day she made me run so hard I pissed myself, then she made me keep running. Michelle is a fast runner and a strong cyclist. She can tear up hills like a woman possessed, and makes me see stars trying to keep up with her.

As Margaret Cho says, in every group of friends there's the sweet one, there's the smart one, and then there's the ho. "Look around. Which one are you?!" If Alison's the sweet one, and Michelle with her PhD from MIT is the smart one, then that only leaves me and Anne to be the ho. In this case, let's define "ho" as "cut-throat bitch".

And then there's Anne. Anne appeared in my life at the beginning of the summer at our regular Friday morning open water swims in sewage-infested water. She was one of Michelle's co-workers and a friend of Alison's from the outside world. I painted a mental target on her forehead the first day when she violated two of my major pet peeves:
1. She tried to turn our good-natured, everybody-swim-to-the-buoy-and-wait-because-we're-all-friends-here swim into a race. At each buoy she would comment on who got there in what order and how far apart. Strange, because at the time she was usually turning up last.
2. Michelle introduced me and mentioned that I had just gotten back the week before from riding from San Francisco to LA. I refuse to brag, but I believe that when a third party mentions my impressive and astounding feats of strength and daring, that all should nearly faint in the sheer blazing glory of my awesomeness and superhuman achievements. Anne did not do this. Anne said, "Oh, I'm training for the Pan-Mass challenge". Like it's the same thing?! The Pan-Mass Challenge is 192 miles over 2 days, LifeCycle is 550 over 7 days. Pan-Mass goes across Massachusetts, an iiiiitty-bitty little state, LifeCycle crosses half of California, a great, big state the size of Italy. Which is not to say that the Pan-Mass challenge isn't a great achievement. It's just that, well, I'm better and everyone should bow before me.

And things with Anne progressed. One day she was talking about a work friend of hers, "He's a really good cyclist," she said. "You couldn't keep up with him..." How dare you?! I thought. You've NEVER seen me ride hard, because I'm waiting for your sorry ass all the time! But the real moment when I really set her in my crosshairs was on a regular Tuesday night ride. There's one hill in town, and we were riding up the shallow back side of it. I'm riding along, twiddling my thumbs and enjoying the company when Anne rides by me singing:
"One way, or another, I'm gonna get you,
"I'm gonna pass you, pass you, pass you, pass you..."
"Aw no she di'in't!" I said to Michelle, who I think was riding next to me. Then louder, "don't you piss me off, Anne, or I'll lay the hurt on you!" I then clicked up about 4 gears and rode to the top of the hill as hard as I possibly could.
"I'll get you on the downhill!" she yelled after me. So I waited for her. At the top of the hill I softpedaled for about a minute until she caught up. And then I went. She never caught me on the downhill. It lead to a whole downhill war, though. For weeks we were trying to set speed records down that hill: 40 mph, then 40.9, 41, and I finally called an end to it when I hit 42.

Anne wasn't a very talented runner, either. She'd never been a runner and was coming back from back surgery. She routinely held about 10-minute miles. Then she signed up for a 4-mile race an Michelle advised that she "run like she stole something". That's all Anne needed. Overnight she dropped over a minute and a half off her average pace. She ran that 4-miler in about 8:25 miles and hasn't slowed down since.

It was infuriating, not only had her run made tremendous progress, but also her swim was back up to where it had been back in her competitive swimming days. When she got a wetsuit, she became untouchable in the Friday morning sewage swims. And every time she got to a buoy faster than someone who used to be ahead of her, she commented on it, "Wow! I must be getting faster, Denise used to be so far ahead of me, and now I have to wait for her for a whole minute!" Every time I hit a major benchmark in my training, she seemed to have surpassed it on the same day. Eventually I stopped updating people on my progress, but I would still come home from a good workout only to find an email in my inbox that I'd been outdone yet again.

This. Was. War!

I'm an extremely competitive person, and I'd finally met my match. I cut off the shit talking entirely, but I started telling EVERYONE around me about how this chick needed a big ol' slice of humble pie, and I wanted to be the one that shoved it down her throat. I don't usually talk about my races outside my blog, but I told people at work about my war. I told my parents. I told the guys at the bike shop. I told what ever friends I have that AREN'T associated with work or the bike shop. Every workout I tried to find another way to get just a little bit faster so that I could beat Anne to within an inch of her life at lobsterman.

Pre-Race

Mary came and picked me up Friday night and we had dinner and drove up to her parents' place in Maine, where we would spend the night. We talked about the usual things that girls talk about when they get together: which cake recipe was best, lipstick and nail polish shades, the joys of childbirth and motherhood, the latest issue of Redbook, which presidential candidate was more of a hunk... You know, the usual. I hope I don't embarrass myself or Mary by saying this, but she really is such an inspiration. Every time I talk to her, she says things that leave me thinking for weeks afterwards. I believe she and I see the world through a similar lens, and she somehow she knows exactly what to say and how to say it to make me see things in a totally different light. She is such a fierce competitor, such an amazing runner, such an impressive athlete, and I can learn (and have learned) so much from her. So if I link to her all the time in my blog, it's not because I'm in love with her (well, not really), it's just that the things she says are always on my mind. It was great to get so much one-on-one time with someone so much wiser and faster than I am and peel back even more of the layers of what makes such a driven, successful woman. Also, she won my everlasting admiration for using the word "scuttlebutt" in a sentence.

After a shitty night's sleep (which was not entirely due to the grandfather clock outside my room that chimed every 15 minutes, I promise!), I woke up, showered, and got my stuff ready. I had wanted to put my hair in 2 braids, since the ear flaps on my new aero helmet have a tendency to make my hair fall in my face and look like shit, but I forgot a brush. I did the best I could to braid it with my fingers, but it was not holding up to drying. Before we got to the start I must have bitched about my hair about 10 times. "Would you shut UP about your damned hair already?!" Mary finally yelled. "If you don't I'm going to tell everyone in the blogosphere that all you could talk about was how worried you were about your damned hair!" But I beat you to it, Mary! Now they know.

Putting our two heads together we managed to find the race site early enough to get good parking, I changed my hairstyle for the third time that morning. We went to registration to pick up our numbers. When the volunteer heard my 4-syllable last name, and Mary's hyphenated last name she said, "What would happen if you guys had children who had to have all those last names?!"
"I'm pretty sure we couldn't have children," I said. What a weird thing to say. Then I left Mary to go set up transition.

I had a bit of trouble figuring out how the numbering on the racks was supposed to go, and as I was moving my stuff from one rack to another, this stocky little troll of a man came up to me. "First of all, your bike is facing the wrong way. 313 goes here."
"But I AM number 313."
"But your bike is facing the wrong way." He pointed out which way my bike should be hanging on the rack and picked up my helmet condescendingly like I'd just tried to pull a fast one on him, and that I'd have to get up pret-ty early in the morning to outsmart this cat. "Second of all, you can't ride in this helmet."
"What?! What's wrong with it?!"
"It hasn't been approved by the WXYZLMNOP." He looked inside the helmet, and then put on an ah-ha!, just as I suspected expression. "Yep, no sticker. I bet you didn't buy this in the US."
"No, I bought it from a UK-based online store. I don't have another helmet. What happens if I ride in that one?"
"Then you'll get DQed."
"Well, I don't mind if I get a DQ next to my name, just as long as I can see my splits." But alas, he didn't think that I would even get that.
By this time Michelle had come over and was staring at the guy with me, stupefied. "Why don't we go down and talk to the expo people," she suggested. All the helmets up for sale were too big, so I settled on the cheapest one, a giant castle to sit high atop my head, and we snipped off the yards and yards of extra strap that hung off the clip when I'd adjusted it. The helmet-seller guys were sympathetic, I'd love to give them a plug, but I wasn't actually paying attention to the company name.

I was ripshit about the whole ordeal, but then I saw a guy walking into transition with the same helmet. "...But I rode 112 miles with this thing and didn't die..." he was saying. Turns out he'd paid more than twice as much for his than I had for mine in Austria the week before, and they'd promised him in that he could use it in the US. Tough luck all around, but at least I didn't have to worry about my hair anymore.

Anne and Alison turned up, I went for a very brief ride to make sure my bike was in the right gear, and then Michelle, Anne and I went on a short warm-up run. Anne had her garmin on her wrist even for our 1-mile warm-up jog, and thank god she never got satellite reception, because I would have killed her if she'd insisted we run an impressive 8:15 pace for our warm-up jog just because she couldn't stand to see a slow number on her screen. Then everyone suited up and went down to the water. "We've swum in colder," I said to Michelle, who swam with me on my birthday when the sewage was about 55º. I waded in up to my waist, just enough so that I could relieve myself. Mistake. I had the feeling that it never really drained properly, and I was standing around on dry land with a urine-filled wetsuit while 5 waves left in front of me.

Standing around with Michelle, Alison, and Anne, and Mary and Ange only a few feet away I started to get nervous. Really nervous. I hugged Alison and begged her not to make me swim alone. I grabbed Michelle's hand and held on for dear life. I... wished Anne luck, and meant it. Every time I looked at Anne's face I got nervous again. What if she won?! She'd made up some song about "I'm going to drop you in the swim," and I already had a fire lit under my ass, which just made me more nervous. But eventually all the women over 30 had to leave, and I was left all alone in my green cap as Alison, Anne, Michelle, and Mary all started without me.

The Swim

The water felt way colder at the swim start than in the warm-up area. According to the race organizers, it was 61º. They set us off, and I found myself in relative calm right away. In fact, I felt alone. I checked over both shoulders, and there were people on both sides, so I wasn't off-course, but there just wasn't anyone around me. What usually happens is that the "real" swimmers pull ahead in one pack, and the "fake" swimmers (triathlon-only swimmers) form their own pack with a widening gap on the first one, with all the non-swimmers trailing behind. I'm almost always at the front of the pack of "fake" swimmers, and this was no exception. In no time flat, I had no one over either shoulder to gauge off of, and I zigzagged quite a bit before we finally caught up with the tail end of the wave in front of us and I was able to follow a line again without looking up every third stroke.

I used my I move for no one! strategy, and just swam on ahead, no matter who was in front of me. I'm beginning to find that after one punch, most people are gone anyway. I had trouble finding the second buoy, but at least I was warmed up now. I started checking in with myself every couple of seconds thinking, "What could I be doing right now to go faster," and then really focusing on pulling the water hard or keeping my head down. In the final stretch I imagined that it was one of those days that I had to make up a bodylength on Alison in just 25 yards. I swam like hell. By the end of the swim I'd passed a few of the jackrabbits in my wave who had gone out too fast, but I was disappointed to note that they were all men. My hard swim had come at a price though, I had a sharp pain around my left kidney, and I was really drained running into transition. I got out in the middle of a big clump of slower people from waves before me, and wasn't very aggressive about pushing them out of my way.

Swim time: 19:32, which may have been short, or there may have been a current, or I may have been Michael Phelps.
Pace: 1:11/100 yd or 1:18/100m, I AM Michael Phelps.
Swim Rank: 72/458 Overall, 16%
Time compared to Anne: 1 minute, 22 seconds slower

T1

"Way to go, Claire!" I heard from a couple of racks away. There was Alison, smiling at me.
"I missed you so much out there!" I yelled. Yes! One down! I thought.

Couldn't get my wetsuit off. Socks, garmin, shoes, fuck, this is taking forever. I ran out of transition, mounted just feet behind Alison, and wished her luck as I rode by. She was gone before I even hit paved road.
T1 time: 2:10
Time compared to Anne: 13 seconds faster, now down 1 minute, 9 seconds.

The Bike

The course starts riding up a mile-long, slow hill. Passing people is easy at the beginning of the bike, since most people go so slow that it looks like they're about to tip over, but I didn't feel like I had my legs yet. Then, up ahead, there was a woman in all black, charging up the thing and passing people like they were standing still. Michelle! I rode as hard as I could and caught her right at the crest of the hill. "Don't you dare let me catch you braking, Michelle!" I yelled as I came up behind her.
Tchssssssss went her brakes. "What? Like that?!" she yelled over her shoulder. She cheered me on as I rode away. Damn, I thought, I was hoping I'd pass her later so she could catch up and pace me on the run.

I rode hard up the hills, but actually didn't ride as hard as I might have liked. I felt like my legs were running out of gas before my lungs were running out of air. (There were several hills reaching from 7-10% grades). Still, no women passed me on the bike. I attacked the hills and made sure to keep pedaling on the downhills. It seemed like every time I came into a turn I was stuck behind someone who couldn't corner to save their life and would have to come to a near dead halt to be able to get around them. Seconds wasted. I can't wait till I'm old and get to leave in the earlier waves. Every race I've done this summer I've had to push my way through shitty swimmers and crappy bikers from earlier waves through the whole race.

I was trucking along, checking out every woman and trying to find Anne. In race time she was only about a minute ahead of me, but in reality it was 3 more than that since she'd left in an earlier wave. I wasn't used to seeing her ass, I wouldn't know how to spot it. Good thing she's white and pasty as a ghost. I passed one pale girl, and almost yelled something, but as I went past her I saw there weren't enough freckles. This wasn't Anne. Finally, at about mile 13 I found her. I reeled her in, and as I passed her I yelled, "Get out of the way, Anne!" She cheered and I meant to yell something encouraging back, but she was already gone when I thought of something to say. To hear her tell it, she could see me for awhile afterwards, but that was a relatively flat stretch of road with no turns in it. I was gone.

Around mile 18 a couple of guys passed me with aero helmets and race wheels, and then when they were by me, they slowed down. It was one of those things where I had to actively slow down to get out of the draft zone. I surged and passed them back, dusting one of them, but the other came back again and slowed me down again. I laid off a minute, trying to figure out how to pass him. It would have taken a tremendous effort to get by him (and he would have made me work for it in 15-seconds bursts all the way to the end), but I had to consciously slow down to not go into the draft zone. I wound up lurking behind him for the rest of the ride, not having enough to make a move, but frustrated that I couldn't ride at my own pace. I fucking hate guys who do that, I hope he grows man boobs as karma. I rode the last 5 miles considerably easier that I wanted to, and lost over half a mile per hour off my average speed in the last 10 miles (which were predominantly downhill).

For the whole second half I thought I'd be passing Mary at any minute, but I never found her. Turns out she'd had a low-speed crash and still managed to hold me off. I shudder to think of what her bike split would have looked like if she hadn't fallen and dropped her chain.

Bike time: 1:09:23
Pace: 21.5 mph
Bike Rank: 67/458 overall, 14%, 4th woman overall
Time compared to Anne: 6 minutes, 16 seconds faster, now up by 5:07

T2

I ran through the sopping wet grass in my socks and my feet were waterlogged before I even crossed the mats. Don't they usually have carpet at these things?! As I ran past the racks I saw Mary, "Hey there, purdy girl!" I yelled. Damn, she's going to beat me by HOURS, I thought. She gave me a bemused dirty look.

I couldn't seem to get my shoes on. I grabbed my visor, race belt, and water bottle to put in place as I ran and looked around. Where the hell do I leave from?! I spun around for a couple of seconds trying to figure out which way to go, and then dashed out. Mom and Dad were standing at the exit and cheered for me. Mom looked happy to see I was still alive, and Dad tried to take a picture. They declined to tell me that I'd put on my number upside-down. As I crossed the mats I heard them calling out Mary's name over the PA system. I wouldn't see her again until the end as she would go on to run about 10 minutes into me.

T2 time: 1:19
Time compared to Anne: 50 seconds faster, now up by 5:57

The Sad, Sad Story of the Run

It wasn't that I rode too hard. It wasn't that my legs were tired. It was the hills. I did not feel "in the zone" for one single second of that run. In fact, I felt like shit from beginning to end. There was the matter of that mile-long hill to climb out of transition where I started breathing like an asthmatic, and I just never recovered. I was wheezing and coughing the whole, entire time. The run was gnarley hilly, and about half way up each one my legs would just... give out. I felt like I was actually lifting weights, with that second-to-last rep feeling in my legs that just wouldn't pass, even as the hills laid off. I kept asking myself, What can I do right now to go faster? and my only answer was, Just don't walk. Whatever you do, don't walk.

Women passed me, men passed me. I didn't even want to look. It was too demoralizing to be passed so easily by so many people while I plodded along at my pathetic whatever-I-was-running, wheezing like a fat girl in gym class. I pulled my visor down so that I wouldn't have to see the people coming back in the other direction, and I tried to give myself tunnel vision so I wouldn't notice the people passing me. Still, I noticed enough girls who looked under 30 to know that I wasn't going to place. You cannot imagine how much I hated my life for those 54 minutes and 54 seconds of it. I felt so sorry for myself, and there seemed to be nothing I could do to ease my suffering. And if I dug deep, intensifying my suffering wasn't getting me there any faster.

I hit the turn-around and started back in the other direction. It felt like I'd been climbing the whole first 5k's, so this MUST all be down hill. But there were so many hills on the way back too. Michelle passed in the other direction and cheered for me, then Alison went by and cheered for me. I didn't even react. I was busy dying. On the last hill, a steep motherfucker, I walked. It was probably only for about 5 seconds, but I still walked. And the blood flowed back into my legs, and for 5 seconds I felt better. Then I went back to running and feeling like I was inches from death. In retrospect, I don't think my decision to take my bento box off my bike was a good one. I burned between 1,500 and 2,000 calories this morning, and only had about 12 oz of Accelerade on the bike and about 8 oz on the run. I have never seen pee so dark as I saw in the restaurant bathroom a couple of hours later.

Accumulated pace. Even though the second half was more downhill, I still slowed down.

I ran down the 1-mile hill into transition, still wheezing, still being passed, and not giving a rat's ass about it. We had to run a full lap around transition, and at the 6-mile mark, everyone started sprinting. Pat Benatar's Hit Me with Your Best Shot (thanks to Damon for correcting my error) came on the PA, which was one of my war songs that I would listen to get myself psyched up before a "Beat Anne into the ground" workout and I tried to sprint, but soon it was clear that I'd puke if I tried. I didn't want to lose a minute just because I was tossing my cookies under a tree 1/10 of a mile from the finish. In fact, just the thought of accelerating smacked me with a wave of nausea. I actually slowed down in the final stretch. As I rounded the last corner and came in to the finish line, I was wondering if I was going to have to stop and yack before I got there. Mom and Dad were on the other side of the barrier smiling and waving. "I'm gonna puke!" I yelled.
Mom laughed. Mom's an easy laugher. "No, I'm serious!" I said, and slowed down more.

And I finished. Somehow, I did not puke.

Run time: 54:54
Pace: 8:51 min/mi (not as slow as it felt, considering the hills)
Run Rank: 284/458 Overall, 62%
Time compared to Anne: 2 minutes, 20 seconds slower
Overall time: 2:27:15
Rank: 139/458 Overall (30%), 5/23 Age Group (22%), 23/158 women (15%)
Time compared to Anne: 3 minutes, 38 seconds faster

Afterward

When I came out the other side I saw Mary, who had finished 10 minutes before and interrupted her conversation to have someone to commiserate with. She hugged me, even though I was all sweaty and gross, and it felt good to hug someone after what I'd been through, even though she was so sweaty and gross too. One by one Anne came in, then Michelle (who had had horrible stomach issues on the run), and then Alison. As we walked down to the water to soak our tired legs, we shared war stories. "I'm interested to see how I stacked up to your friend," I said. "Several months ago you told me I couldn't keep up with him and I got all pissed. I'm curious to see if it's true." In fact, I rode 15 seconds faster than he did. It's not much, but enough.
"I said that?!" said Anne. "I can't believe you passed me at mile 13." (she was the one that noticed the mile, not me) "I was hoping I could keep you off until at least the end. I couldn't even stay with you for a second. You don't ride like that when you ride with us."
"No," I said. "Of course not."
She stopped and she just looked at me. There was a glimmer of understanding in her eye. FINALLY! After all these long months of suffering through her heckling and haranguing every time I rode with the group she finally realized that, on the bike anyway, she may have been racing every training day, but I wasn't. And then, just for a second, I saw it. For just a moment she nearly fainted in the sheer blazing glory of my superhuman strength and awesome power. My overall win hadn't been too stellar. She'd swum and run faster than I did, but I think she might have gotten a tiny, itty bitty taste of that humble pie. She'd underestimated me, and the first commandment of Clairedom is that you do not underestimate a Claire!

I'd achieved my main race goals of 1) beating Anne, and 2) breaking 2:30, but as time went by I got madder and madder, and madder, and madder. I could have ridden harder. Only about a minute and 20 seconds separated me from the fastest female bike split of the day. It had been a very competitive field, but just as always, I'd fallen in the top 15% overall of the swim and bike, and plummeted to around 60% in the run. Whatever I may want to say here, I've said in other race reports 100 times, but FUCKIN'-A! I'm SO SICK of being such a shitty runner!

¡¡¡Adivinad quién va a México!!!

¡¡¡CLAIRE va a México!!!

I just signed up for Ironman Cozumel!  I'll be bib number 1076.

And what the hell is up with all those questions?  Home paper?  Home news station?  This is required information?!  I wanted to put the London Mirror or some foreign tabloid or something. Significant personal achievements?  I wanted to say Peeing into a Mountain Dew bottle without spilling a drop. Why are "Nationality" and "Nation you're racing for" different questions?  I suppose if you're Basque or Palestinian it would be significant.  I was tempted to race for Azerbaijan or something.  Why is "do you wear contact lenses" a required field, but allergies to medications is optional?  And yet they don't ask your t-shirt size.

WTC, I am NOT impressed.  Nor am I impressed with the $525 registration fee, or the $26 processing fee.  What the hell do you have to PROCESS?!

In other news, to answer the poll question: Is it possible to look cool in an aero helmet?

The answer: No.

Too bad blogger's being a bitch so I can't show you a picture.

This weekend Michelle, swimming buddy Alison, training partner/rival Anne, Mary, and I all go head to head at Lobsterman.  Stay tuned.  It should be an interesting race report.

Foolhardy = Fool + Hardy, or just Fool + Hard

Now that I think about it, I might have guessed that when I had to push my planned ride in the White Mountains back a day because Tropical Storm Hannah (downgraded from a hurricane somewhere between South Carolina and here), I should have known that weather might be an issue. I had been checking the hourly forecast like it was my job for days, watching as the rain moved later, and earlier, later, and earlier like tides. Finally it looked like the forecast had settled on a cloudy morning for Sunday, getting progressively sunnier throughout the day, so I got in my car with my bike and I went up to New Hampshire.

The first flaw in my planning was not thinking that maybe, possibly, with a tropical storm, there's a chance for winds. There is no worse place to be on a windy day than between skyscrapers or between mountains. The second flaw in my little plan was realizing that when one planned to ride 120 miles, that there might be a variety of climates in different places along the rout, especially when one planned to be riding through big, weather-blocking things like mountains.

Or maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind the idea DID occur to me. But I did what I always do and dismissed it. I can handle it, I always assume. "Foolhardy" that's the word you're looking for. But the funny thing is, I always DO handle it; begrudgingly maybe, but I always manage somehow (more on this to come). Hey, I'm not dead yet, am I?

Speaking of which, my mom thinking I'm going to die every time I step out the door is really getting old. She's not scared of the very real dangers of getting hit by a car, or losing control of your bike on a high-speed descent. She thinks that I'm simply going to become so "tired" that I'm going to just keel over on my bike and drop dead. I think she thinks that the "tired" you feel at the end of an endurance event is just like the "tired" you feel when you need a nap, and that my demise will be something akin to falling asleep at the wheel, or handlebars. She knows nothing of bonking (I tried to explain it once and she got alarmed like it was something that one would have to be hospitalized for a week over), or even "soreness" of the variety that is immediate and purposely inflicted.

So last night when I said I was excited for my trip, she asked, "How far will you be riding?"
"A century," I lied. I thought that maybe she wouldn't put the word together with its real distance.
"You're going to ride 100 miles?!" My mom only drives 100 miles once or twice a year.
"Really, mom, it's no big deal. 100 miles really isn't that taxing for me anymore." It's true.
She rolled her eyes like a mother does when her child says something exasperating like, 'It's not my fault that my room's a mess because an elephant just ran through,' or 'If you make me clean my room I'm going to run away to the circus!' "But what if it IS harder? You'll be in the mountains, maybe you'll get more tired than usual..."
"Well, you know, that's kind of the POINT."
Dad snickered signaling that he was on my side and it was the end of the conversation.

But still, I hate it when people (especially Mom) do that! They think it's a crazy idea, and they doubt you, and pretty soon you begin to doubt yourself. Where 2 minutes ago I was totally sure I could do this ride, now I had a little voice in the back of my head saying, 'and what if you can't, stupid?' I knew it would be a tough day, but now I began to wonder how I would get back to my car if I wasn't able to go on?

Great! Now my ride was ruined.

Not a picture I took. If anyone wants to donate a nice digital camera, please e-mail me for mailing address.

I woke up early and was on my bike riding past Loon Mountain and up the Kangamangus Highway ("The Kank" for short, a nickname that evokes all kinds of fun imagery for me) by 8:45. I got the biggest climb out of the way first, climbing over 2,000 feet in the first hour, and when I got to the top the clouds cleared and the sun came out as I blasted down the back side of it.

Left: Riding uphill on the Kank.

There are days for speed records, and then there are days when you have to just knuckle down and get to the finish any way you know how. I'm a confident descender, but the roads were slick and my brakes slippery, and I decided to just enjoy the ride down. Then, around mile 30, I turned north off The Kank and found myself in the face of a stiff, stiff headwind. I had no way of knowing how hard it was blowing, but it definitely felt like over 20 mph, and wouldn't have been surprised if it were over 30. Either way, I was riding through the wake of a tropical storm, so use your imagination.

Right: Near the top of the Kank; Below, Left: Sign at the summit. One of these days I'm going to go back on a sunny day and ride like a bat out of hell down that road.

And the wind stayed that way for fifty miles. It was stronger in parts, gentler in others. It would let off going up the steep uphills, and then pick up again on the flats and downhills. Have you ever been riding slightly downhill, pedaling hard, and only going 14 mph? That was me yesterday. Every time the road turned, I would hope for some relief, but the road would twist, and the wind would still be there. When I turned a 90º corner into Gorham at around 70 miles I thought for sure that the wind would be over, but somehow it was dead on here too! It felt like I was riding with a 500-pound gorilla on my back. It was like I was dragging a manhole cover behind me. It was like I was pushing a brick wall with my front wheel. "GET OFF ME!" I said out loud. Because when you're alone on the bike no one can hear you. "LAY THE FUCK OFF!" I liked the sound of that last part. "FUCK OFF!"

But the wind did not listen, and I found myself having to dig deep mentally just to keep going. Physically I was feeling fine, but there's something that's just so draining about working that hard and still moving that slowly, especially when you're on hilly terrain full of false flats, and a road that, just when you think it's over, just seems to go up and up and up around every turn. It took me about an hour to get from miles 50 to 60, and I must have looked at my watch 10 times per mile.

If you start feeling sorry for yourself in a situation like that, you're cooked. I knew that. So I just kept yelling at the wind and pushing on, and repeating inane mantras like "Just keep spinning", or singing a single line from My Fair Lady over and over to myself, not because it meant anything, but just because it popped up there. People would be so disappointed if they knew what I REALLY think about when I'm alone on the bike. I passed some really pretty views in this part of the ride, but I was too tired and demoralized to stop and take pictures, so I'll share some of the great photos Google has to offer instead.

I wished I had someone else there to take turns blocking the wind. Originally I hadn't planned to do this ride alone. I'd planned to do a shorter 80-mile version with less climbing so that others could come along. But in the end people bailed because of family commitments, or because they just weren't sure they could hack the distance over the terrain. Because of the conditions, I was kind of glad that people who weren't used to long rides didn't come, not because I didn't want them there (I REALLY could have used the company!), but because I was having such a hard time holding it together myself, I don't know how I would have managed to remain upbeat enough to coax someone else through the experience. It got me thinking...

I had promised Mindy that if she came along, I would make sure she got through the ride. I am a firm believer that, especially biking, people can go way further than they give their bodies credit for. In the end, I think Mindy made the right decision staying home and not push her luck with her injury, but if she had come along there is no doubt in my mind that she would have made it. Same goes for everyone else I invited. But I can't guarantee that they would have had a good time of it. Hell, I certainly wasn't having a good time of it.

Which brings me back to what I was saying before about doubt. Until my mom gave me that look, I had never doubted for a second that I could do this ride. I've ridden farther, and I've ridden similar terrain. But as I sat there pushing into the headwind for the third or fourth hour, I began to doubt myself. What were you thinking, you stupid lunatic! This is horrible. You're going to poop out. You're going to have to quit somewhere north of Mt. Washington and then you're going to have to sit there alone on the side of the road for 3 hours while you wait for someone to come pick your sorry ass up. And then you'll NEVER be able to live it down. This is a fine mess you've gotten us into. Sure, I didn't FEEL pooped, but I was convinced I would... eventually.

It sounds a bit cheezy, but when I started to get a bit nervous, I just reminded myself that this may be one of the hardest rides I’ve ever been on, but I’ve been on hard rides before, and I’d gotten through those alright. And for the moment, I still wasn’t feeling the worst that I’d ever felt on my bike. I decided to try to catalog my five hardest workouts and compare how I was feeling now to how I'd felt then, and also remember the doubts I'd had going into them. In typical latenight fashion, here they are:
5. My solo ride from Barcelona to Girona and back (the first 100 mile ride I ever did).
4. My solo ride in the Adirondacks where I was feeling so sick and tired (the longest ride I’d ever done at the time, and some of the hilliest terrain I'd ever done as well).
3. The marathon I did on almost no training whatsoever.
2. Tres Nacions, when the weather sucked, we climbed the highest peak in the Pyranees and I wasn’t particularly conditioned (still the most climbing I’ve ever done in one day).
1. The 51-mile overnight hike I did in Barcelona (which was the only time I’ve ever actually FOUND my limit). I should have gotten medical attention at the end.

I think about those days all the time as points of reference. I figure that if I could get through those days, I could get through anything. I guess that’s the thought that’s in the back of my mind when I set out from my car on days like today all by myself. I plan out the rout purposely so that when I want to quit I’ll be far from my car. That way I’ll have no choice but to finish. Because if I’ve done it before, I can do it again.

Left: I purposely set out the rout so that I would pass the only shortcut before I got tired.

And because I still had a long way to ride, I began to think about a concept that I heard about on this podcast (Edit: No!  Stop, wait.  I mean it was THIS episode!) They were saying that for everything you do, you relate it to experiences that you’ve already had. For example, if you’ve tried to run a 24-minute 5K in the past and you never quite made it, then every time you go to try to achieve that goal, then something in you tells you that you'll never be able to do it. You fail, because you believe that you're going to fail. On the other hand, if you try something and are successful – let’s say that you run a seven- or eight- or nine- or ten-minute mile for the first time – then you can build upon that experience. You can begin a whole chain of success based on past experiences. Sure it hurt to run that first fast mile, sure it was tough, but you did it and you survived. Now you are more likely to run that pace in the future, and continue to build on it because you know that you can. Alright, I'm paraphrasing it all wrong. Just listen to the podcast, alright?

Right: Does anyone know why my photos keep getting cut off like that?

I’m not sure that I was any better trained for that ride than anyone else that I invited along. I simply don’t do these superlong rides often enough to make major physiological adaptations to that kind of riding (pro riders ride several rides of that length a week). Probably the only difference was that I do this stupid shit to myself all the time, and I have that confidence that I can fall back on knowing that I’ve survived my own stupidity before, so I can survive again. This mentality has gotten me through some pretty tough weekends this summer, and whatever hasn’t killed me has made me stronger. Well, mentally anyway.

Still, you wouldn't want to be sitting next to me on those days. I'm crabby and snappish. Grunt and groan and scream and blame others for my discomfort. I want to go through my day doing exactly what will make life easier for ME, and god help you if you get in my way. Maybe it's better to find those mental barriers alone...

Once I finally popped out of the wind somewhere around mile 90, I was feeling pretty happy again. I was loving riding my bike again and was pretty sad that my day was drawing to a close. Okay, not that sad. The last stretch was a 10-mile bike trail through the woods in Fraconia Notch. It was twisty and filled with little tunnels and bridges. The woods looked like something out of a fairy tale or a ghost story. After a short, steep climb the trail shot me down, down, down around thrilling corners, through tunnels, and over wooden bridges. It was great! I just coasted and hung onto my brakes in case there were clueless hikers around the corner. Finally the trail spit me out next to the lake at the bottom of Cannon mountain where the Old Man in the Mountain used to be before one day he just slipped away… literally.

By the time I got back to my car after 118 miles, 7 hours and 11 minutes (I think), and between 6 and 8,000 feet of climbing (depending on whether you trust the Garmin or Zone 5/SportTracks software), I was even thinking about continuing to ride. Maybe I’d just ride back to the top of The Kank before going home... Well, I didn’t think about it too seriously. The point is, I was pretty sure I could have gone further.

Anyway, I want to go back. Viable biking days through the mountains are limited this time of year, so it's gotta be soon. There's talk of trying to arrange a ride up Mt. Washington (only about 7 miles – straight up – and then catch a ride or a funicular or something back down), maybe in 2 weeks? Just google images of the Mt. Washington Auto Road and TRY and tell me it doesn't look thrilling! And anyone who wants to ride 50-100 miles or more with me through those mountains any time in the next couple of months, e-mail me. Seriously. I'm going with or without you.

I hate passing up free beer.

Dear Furry Man with Fuzzy Shoulders,

Please do not wear tank tops or running singlets anymore. Especially to events where you are going to sweat. It is not sexy. In fact, it is pretty gross. It makes the rest of your fellow runners uneasy at the crowded starting line because we are afraid that you will inadvertently touch us. And, by the way, I know you're the man who gets all nasty sweaty at the gym and then doesn't wipe off the weight equipment when you are done with it. That's gross too. You're gross. May I suggest you find a skilled hair removal specialist in your local yellow pages? Thank you.

Best,
Claire

Question: When was the last 10K I ran?
Answer: Sometime in the spring of 2006. I was living in Barcelona. I still smoked. I had a hangover. Joolie and I got lost on the way to the starting line and missed it by 8 minutes. Once we got close and realized that everyone had started already, we just started running. I set a PR somewhere in the high 50's.

If I signed up for a 10K I was pretty much guaranteed a PR. No matter that I'd already ridden over 130 miles this weekend, there was pretty much no way I could miss a PR. So I decided to switch out my Thursday tempo run for a Sunday 10K PR at the Malden Irish American 10K. I didn't even have to drive far to do it. Malden is only 2 towns away.

The race started at 11 a.m. How different from the races I've been doing the rest of this year! There were kids walking around with race numbers; also different from my usual trend. Most people were standing around in cotton t-shirts. Refreshing. I only paid $20 to enter (what a welcome change!) at the coat check of the Irish American club (a place that smelled like it had had a few too many Guinnesses spilled on its function hall floor over the years), and then wandered around watching everyone smiling, laughing, checking out the giant course map (a mapquest map printed out on a huge piece of butcher paper), doing cartwheels, anything but warming up. You can find more Massholes at an Irish event than pretty much anywhere else in Boston, and the Boston accents don't get much thicker than the ones I was hearing around me. Usually serious runners tend to be a dweebier, more white-collar crowd and don't tend to have the accent. I don't know if I heard an R all morning.

I showed up early. I got bored.

Half an hour before the start I went for a short warmup. I felt sluggish. I let my body pick the pace, and the pace it picked was 11-minute miles. Eight tenths of a mile later I was back and still not feeling warmed up.

I saw a chick stretching out wearing a pink top, pink shorts, pink socks, pink shoes, and a red Red Sox cap. I vowed to beat her. She looked stupid, and she didn't look that fast.

After some confusion over where exactly the starting line was, we lined up and they set us off exactly at 11:00. I was impressed at the organization, how they were able to set us off at the right time, and that the mile markers were dead on.

Running I felt like hell, but I figured I'd try to fake it. I'd set my watch to beep if I went slower than 8:00 miles. I might get tired, but I'm tough, I could handle it. It was only a 10K, a distance so short it almost seemed silly to run it. I followed the people around me, and after a couple of blocks I looked down to see that I was running roughly 7:15 pace. Oops. Better slow down. But it's hard to slow down when everyone around you is going so much faster than you're supposed to be. I consciously let people pass me, but I was still running too fast.

The majority of the first mile was uphill. I ran it in 7:44.

The next mile was mostly downhill, and I did a little bit of a better job of controlling my speed, mostly because it was already catching up to me. This was going to be messy. I ran the second mile in about 7:56. I'd hoped to run 8-minute miles, at least I was on the right track.

The third mile was flat, and I finally managed to get my speed somewhat under control. This was mostly because the first couple of miles, and all the miles on the bike this weekend were really starting to catch up with me. God, it was hot. It felt like it was about 95º (actually, only 80). I felt like hell and felt like I might shit my pants, but it was only a 10K. I could fake it for another 3 miles. I ran the third mile in 7:58, right where I wanted to be.

And then...

KER-PLOW!!!

Pieces of Claire went flying everywhere as I blew up into a million tiny little pieces. No matter what I WANTED to do, my body was going to make me slow down. NOW! No faking it anymore. We were running on a flat out-and-back section, and I saw the stupid-looking chick in the pink. She was about half a mile in front of me. Fuck.

I hit the turn-around and felt the wind in my face. I was thankful for it, since it was cooling me down, but did it have to be so damned STRONG?! For most of the back half of the course we had a 14mph headwind that gusted at times up to 22 mph. I ran the 4th mile in 8:23, exactly enough to undo all the extra seconds I'd bought myself with my overzealous start.

The 5th mile came and went. I alternated between yelling at myself to hurry the fuck up and wanting to go back to those 11-minute miles that my body wanted to run so badly. I ran it in 8:38. It was a compromise.

The sixth mile was more of the same. I ran it in 8:54. The red shirt that I'd been trailing since mile 2 pulled away and I felt like a failure.

In the last .2 miles a bunch of stupid punk 8-year-old kids decided to run out and run right behind me. Nothing makes you feel shittier than a bunch of 10-year-olds sprinting around you like you're a joke. I wanted to punch them. I wanted to push them under a car but there were none around. Then a lady that didn't LOOK like a runner passed me and I couldn't pass her back. And the stupid kids started saying to each other, "Are you still running?!" "My legs are tired." Stupid fucking kids, you've only run 3 blocks. I hope your legs are so tired that you DIE! Right at the last turn they had a bagpipe player playing a song that sounded like a hysterical dying duck. I felt like I was dying too. I averaged 8:00 miles for the last chunk. THAT's what I call a final kick?!

I came into the finishing chute all by myself in 50:37. My garmin said I had only run 6.13 miles for 8:15 pace; they say I ran the full 6.2 in 8:10's. I was over 5 minutes behind the bitch in pink. Whatever, I bet I look better naked than she does. She was kind of chunky and I don't think she had enough neck. At the end of the chute they took a look at my face to try and figure out if I looked over 21 and then held out a couple of drink tickets for me. "No thanks, I don't drink," I said. The last thing I wanted right now was a beer, I thought I might puke.
Then she said something like, "Oh, SHE'S the picture of health," that could have been taken as a compliment or an insult. Whatever, bitch. We're both here because we got the Irish drinking gene. The difference is that you come here to drink, and I come here so I won't.

I went to my car and changed into some flip flops (I still have gaping, raw sores on the backs of my ankles from my unfortunate sock malfunction last weekend - it's hard to take pictures of the backs of your own ankles, by the way) and came back to check out the results. Wow. I'd made the first sheet of paper! And somehow I'd managed to pull off third in my age group. I was going to get hardware in a road race! Alright, there were only 10 chicks in my age group, but I beat 7 of them. I got 6th woman overall, which sounds impressive until you see that only 23 women participated. Clearly the really fast girls didn't have the Malden Irish American 10K on their race calendar, but it was their loss. No free beer for them. And if those other two chicks had stayed home, I would have won.

It took them almost twice as long as it took me to run the race to begin to hand out the awards. I listened to the bad Irish band do jarring covers of Johnny Cash and Jimmy Buffet as well as some traditional Irish drinking songs. I seemed to be the only one getting irritated by the wait, since most of the freckle-faced participants, volunteers, and spectators were enjoying the $1.00 cups of Michelob Ultra made available by the race's generous sponsor. The race was to benefit the American Lung Association, and it kind of made me snicker to see how many people were lighting up once they got a couple of beers in them.

I got my medal, and then I went home, and that was it.

The end.

Anti-climactic? Yeah.

Well if you can't be nice about it...

Mary/IronMatron wrote this great post back in March about sandbagging. Okay, I'll admit it, "sandbagging" is a term that I pretend to know what it means, but I'm never quite sure. Does it mean "secret training"? And how did it get the name? I picture a guy running around with sandbags hidden in his sweatpants to get stronger. But anyway, in Mary's brilliant post, which you should have read by now (have you?! No? Go read it, really!) she talks about how she lies about her training. She says, "Oh, I'm just going to the supermarket," when secretly she's really going for a hard run. Why? Because people think we're nuts. Why would you WANT to run in your spare time? You must be insane. And leave your KIDS (with a perfectly capable chaperon) to go for a bike ride?! People are pretty sure that that constitutes criminal neglect.

I'm lucky. I'm young-ish and single, and I can at least admit that I run, swim, or ride my bike sometimes. I suppose people think, Well, when you're single you have to keep your figure. She's not getting any younger and she STILL doesn't have a man. But when she settles down... But distance, people can't deal with. So I withhold information. "What did you do this weekend?"
"Oh, I just went for a run in the woods. The weather was BEAUTIFUL, wasn't it?" Note the change of subject to bring up a topic everyone can relate to. Most people will assume you ran a couple of miles, or whatever distance they can get their mind around, and then they move on.
"Yes, the weather WAS beautiful. My snot-factory brats did [insert innane outdoor activity] all day on Saturday." Did you notice how it's not about what they did, it's about their KIDS. Ugh, if I had kids, I'd ditch them from time to time too, just to get my own identity back. Well anyway...

A story: I'm poor, so after I did Vineman (that's the full iron distance, for those of you who are just tuning in) I flew home the very next evening. The race was on a Saturday and I flew home on a Sunday evening. Sunday morning was the San Francisco marathon, and Shane and I got to see all kinds of marathon runners hobbling around the city all afternoon. When I went to the airport I was wearing my Boston Marathon jacket. I was walking down the jetway, waiting in line to enter the plane, and the woman behind me asked, "Did you run the marathon this morning?"
"No," I said. Which was true. Then I said, "If I had, I wouldn't be walking this well now." Immediately I thought, Why the hell did I just say that?! I didn't run a marathon this morning, but I ran a marathon about 12 hours before these folks on Saturday afternoon, and that after biking 112 miles and an extra long swim as warm-up. To the naked eye I was walking fine, but if I sat down for too long it hurt like hell to get up, and it took me about a minute to bend down far enough to reach my shoes.
I got into the plane, sat down in my seat, and the guy next to me asked, "Did you run the Boston Marathon this year?"
"Yeah," I said. Then I explained that I ran it as a bandit, as I promised Mindy I would do EVERY SINGLE TIME someone commented on it.
"Congratulations!" he said.
"It was 4 months ago," I said, perplexed.
"Congratulations anyway." Then his fiancée came back from the restroom and sat down. "Hey Julie, she just ran the Boston Marathon!" he said.
"Congratulations!" she said.
It had been four frigging months ago. I'd run 2 races LONGER than a marathon since then, one of which was just yesterday. And they thought I'd still be reeling from Boston?! But I didn't say anything. I smiled, thanked them, and went back to my book. Why would I do that?

Now, a little perspective. I'm from the same town as Alicia Sacramone, the gymnast. You know, the first gymnast in history to have a set of tits. The one that was always doing the inappropriate touching to the other girls and giving them kisses that looked more like headbutts? I was friends with her brother in high school, but the connection ends there. So anyway, although I have never met her, this gymnast who went to the Olympics is from my same little podunk town, where the only reason we get on the news is because the middle school vice principal decides not to let the 7th graders go see Miracle on 34th Street at Christmastime because of the religious nature of the play. As you can imagine, it's been huge. Banners were put up downtown on the train overpass that said "Congratulations Alicia on your silver medal!" There are like a dozen shops downtown, and each one had a big-ass poster in the window that said, "Congratulations, Alicia, you made Winchester and your country proud!" One restaurant (whose owners are close to the Sacramone family) even put up their own giant banner. Then, one day I come home from work and there are cops everywhere stopping traffic. There are hundreds of little kids in the street holding tiny American flags. Turns out, Alicia, Olympian and darling of Winchester, MA was coming home, and so of course they threw her a parade. The whole town practically shit themselves with delight.

I am not criticizing Alicia Sacrimone. She has worked DAMNED hard for what she achieved, I'm sure she has sacrificed a lot to reach the highest level in her sport, and she went to the Olympics and was successful. She deserves to have the whole town shitting themselves over her, because I'm sure that for the past 10 years she has worked her little ass off and no one outside of the gym has recognized her accomplishments. I am also not saying that ANYTHING I've done is a hundreth as impressive as going to the Olympics. But you've gotta wonder... what if it hadn't been gymnastics? What if she had medaled archery, or decathlon, or fencing, or even rhythmic gymnastics? What about triathlon? Or the marathon? Or the 10K open water swim?! Then she might have gotten a full page in the Winchester Star, but certainly not a giant banner, a parade, and hundreds of elementary school children waving American flags and asking for autographs.

Now I don't think I'm any Olympian, and I certainly don't think anyone should be throwing me a parade. But to talk about something I've done the weekend before, that would be nice. As it is, I'm afraid to talk about it. Because you know what people do when you tell them that you ran a marathon or rode your bike 100 miles or did a half ironman? They get MAD! But it's even worse when other athletes do it:
"Are you completely INSANE?!" (Alison, the best swim buddy a girl could have).
"Why the hell would you do something like that?" (Andrew, an elite-level 70.3 athlete).
"I hate you." (Judi)
"You're nuts!" (Rocketpants)
"And you call me a freak!" (Anne, who makes me take it to the next level every day)

Non-athletic people don't even know how to react. They go through disbelief, and then awe, and then anger. "You're nuts. That much physical activity isn't good for a person, you know." (Don't even get me started on that one!) The other common reaction makes me even more uncomfortable: "I could NEVER do something like that!" Of course you could, you just haven't decided to dedicate all your free time to doing it, that's all. They kind of get this glazed look in their eye and then begin a conversation that can basically be boiled down to the word, "Wooooooooooooooooooow..."
After I rode the 12-hour race in New York, all I wanted to do was go to bed. I was getting set to do just that when one of the guys in the house said, "Come out here. I want to see what someone who rode their bike 200 miles looks like!" How do you react to something like that?!

Sometimes on the Monday after a great race, I'm still sore and still proud of an accomplishment, and I just want to tell someone about it. I want to talk to someone who gets it about how hard I had to work, the things I saw along the way, how fun this part was and how painful that part was. I don't want a "You're crazy!" or a "Wooooooooow!". I want to... relive it. It makes me sad that once you shower and take off the finisher's medal, the glory is over. Hell, the Olympians get a fucking PARADE. I know that after a tough weekend I'm stiff and walking funny, and I just hope that someone will ask me about it. But my parents don't understand. My mom is still convinced I'm going to drop dead from exhaustion in the middle of a race one of these days. My dad still thinks I suck at this sport. My co-workers, well my co-workers couldn't even wrap their minds around exercising an hour a day.

Hmmmm... one of these days maybe I should start a blog...

Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

After last week's terrible disappointment/failure, I've done some major soul-searching. I dug around deep in there and I couldn't find a single reason to press on with my goal of running a 50 miler in November, other than that it had been on the schedule for almost a year. How did it get on the damned schedule in the first place? I was looking on Cool Running one day, the day after my untrained marathon run on nothing but piss and vinegar, and I thought I was capable of anything. That day I saw the listing for a trail marathon the next week, gave about 2 seconds' thought to signing up at that very moment, and then decided not to press my luck. I decided that rather than running the marathon in 2007, I'd run the 50 miler in 2008. Not very dramatic. It was a whim, and I'm stubborn, and this is how I get myself into trouble. Now, for the second year in a row, I've made the adult decision to leave the 50 milers to the REAL runners.

Running is stupid. Ultrarunning is stupider.

This year I feel like I've proven a lot of things to myself and to other people. I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this, no matter what your opinion of me, you probably don't think I'm a softie. Even admitting that other people might not think I'm a loser is a big step for me personally this year. Tick off another reason that I don't have to run 50 miles.

BUT me taking the mature, adult approach to things ended there.

If I was going to give up on a goal that I had broadcast to the world, then the very least I could do to not look like a total loser would be not to have my first and only step towards said goal be a DNF. So what did I do? I got right on the internet and found the web page for my next scheduled race: a 50K near Syracuse, NY.

But registration had closed.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I got mad at myself for giving up so easily. I clicked on the "Contact Us" button and wrote to the race director begging him to let me in. Of course I thought he would say no and that I would be off the hook. I forgot that trail runners are the nicest people in the world.

"Claire, call me immediately. I think we can work something out." Oh fuck.

Here are all the reasons why this was a bad idea:
~Syracuse is over 5 hours away.
~I didn't have a place to stay.
~I did an ironman 3 weeks ago, and I was pretty sure that a 50K was on the list of things you're NOT supposed to do while you're recovering.
~I really didn't want to run this race.

But a 5-minute phone call later, Todd, the world's nicest race director had opened registration back up for me, and I was signed up for the Green Lakes 50K in Fayetteville, NY.

I took a Tylenol PM at midday Saturday and went back to bed at about 3:00. At 10:45 I woke up, packed up my stuff, and hit the road at midnight. God, this was a stupid idea. Every car I passed I thought, "Are you going to be the drunkard that kills me?" It seems that in a stupid decision like this, Fate should intervene to let you know that you're on the wrong track. But I made it to Fayetteville with no problems at about 5:30 in the morning.

This was the only trail event that I had ever done that was chip timed. A group of trail runners always looks a lot like a bunch of hobos fresh out of the Salvation Army, so I couldn't really tell if it was a very competitive field, but the chip on my ankle didn't bode well. I wondered if I would finish in last place (which would be okay) and have to be alone for the next 31 miles (which would not be okay). Luckily a woman named Rosemary, who was a nervous chatterer struck up a conversation. She said that this was her first ultra (and first marathon for that matter), and that she'd read all the blogs and race reports about this race, and she was just so excited to be running. I made 2 mental notes: 1. Only say nice things about other runners, because they are all nice people, and they all use the same internet that I do (right, Damon?), and 2. I was probably the only person in this crowd that really, truly didn't want to be here, so out of respect I should fake like I was happy to be out here half way to fucking Cleveland running 31 miles in the woods.

The course was 4 7.7-mile loops, each of which was broken into 2 sub-loops: the Green Lakes loop (which was flat) comprising the first and last 2 miles, and the Serengeti loop (which was hilly) making up the middle 4 miles. The course was absolutely stunning. Really. I'm not one to be taken by scenery, but by the end of the first loop, I was glad I had made the phone call and the drive. The Green Lakes are actually green, not because of pond scum, but because of some sort of chemistry or fairies. Or chemistry fairies. The water was crystal clear. (It really looks like the picture below). On the Serengeti loop you ran up a hill and then through grassy fields. One was filled with purple flowers, another with yellow flowers (not actually the pictures above, but my stupid camera phone couldn't handle the colors). At one point about half way through the loop you run around a corner and can see the whole countryside laid out below you.


I was surprised that most of the people around me had a slight Midwestern twang in their accents. I'd only driven 5 hours due west, was the Midwest really this close to home? I talked to a couple from Michigan after the finish whose drive had only been about an hour longer than mine, and they'd come through Canada to get here. "Michigan, I've never been to Michigan," I said. "That sounds so exotic!" And then, "Canada, that REALLY sounds exotic." I was serious about Canada, I lied about Michigan. It's hard to say something nice about Michigan without lying.

By the end of the first loop, it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a hot one. The humidity in the air was brutal even before it got hot. It was a sunny day, and nearly the entire Serengeti loop was exposed. The high temperatures of the day were pushing 90*, and that was the main complaint of everyone I talked to. Goddamn, it was hot! It was the kind of heat where your sweat just can't evaporate. Blech. But I've been getting used to the heat, I guess. Not so much that my body's been acclimating, but that I've finally realized that there's nothing that my complaining is going to do about the situation, so it's best not to dwell on it.

I spoke with a few women on the run: Rosemary (from the start), whose longest run up until this point was a 25K; Brooke, who was only 18, running with her mom, and starting college tomorrow (she made me feel old because I talked to her like someone more grown up than she was, and she let me); the woman in the grey sports bra with the Midwestern accent whose name I never caught; and Susan, who I was only with briefly at the end. But mostly I talked to my usual demographic: straight men over 40. My first 2 laps I was in an endless leap-frog game with a man in red shorts (Mark, I later found out). My second loop I picked up Ray, and ran 3/4 of the second half of the race with him.

Having Ray around really helped the time go by. What sucked about the 4-loop course was the fact that by the fourth loop, you know the whole entire course (except that they kept moving the aid stations farther and farther apart). And the real kicker is that when you start the fourth loop you're already at about mile 23 and ready to call it a day. Ray was a chatty, upbeat guy, and the perfect person to keep around on the last loop. He stayed with me to make sure that he went slow enough (I'm good for that!). This was his first 50K, so he didn't want to go too hard, but when I wanted to pick up the pace, he was right there with me. Talking to him made the miles go faster.

I wish this picture had come out. You should have seen the course first thing in the morning.

At the beginning of the second loop a clump of us were running together and a younger guy ran through us repeating, "Look out, 100K winner coming through!". Then an old guy came through right on his heels. The 100K runners had only started 30 minutes before us, so this guy couldn't have been on more than his third loop (of eight). Wasn't it a bit early to be calling the winner? And having a pacer in a low-key race like this? That's obnoxious. He never lapped me again. I was unimpressed.

But the cool thing about this race was that we DID get to see the winners running on their last lap. When you're as slow as I am, you don't get to see much of the action. The first guy lapped us early in our third (his final) loop, and actually APOLOGIZED for lapping us. Clearly, he was way more gracious than Mr. 100K Champion, and had an endearing, high-pitched laugh. We passed him back a few miles later. He was walking and blowing up pretty hard. But still, I get to say that I passed the race leader (okay, a lap behind him, but the fact remains that for a few moments in time I was moving faster than he was). When he started running again and passed us back I called after him, "Now don't let me see you on this trail again!" I hoped he won.
A couple more guys lapped us, and coming out of the far aid station the volunteers yelled after one of them, "He's bonking pretty bad. You can catch him, no problem!"
Oh no! We passed him again about a mile later. He was walking and shaking his muscles out as best he could. It was pretty clear he was going to walk it in the rest of the way. "Are you alright?" I asked. Had this been a road race I would have been met with a snarl if the likes of me passed the likes of him and acted concerned. Instead, he let out that easygoing high-pitched laugh again. "Do you want some gumdrops or something?" I asked. It was the best I could offer. I'd gone for the cheap nutrition option in this race.
"Nah, I'll get there," he said. "Just not as fast as I thought."

When I got to the finish line a few hours later he was there, talking to the other fast guys. "Hey! You made it! Congratulations!" I said.
He gave me a gigantic smile. "You were great out there!" he said, for all the cool kids to hear. "What did you offer me? Gum drops?!" And then he let out that great laugh again. I'm telling you, I could not have received a bigger compliment than to be talked to as an equal by the cool kids. But that was later, at this point he was still falling apart at mile 27, and I was still feeling sorry for myself a full loop behind him at mile 20.

On the second loop my socks had started to slip into my shoes and by now I'd worn holes in the backs of my ankles. At the end of each loop I sat down to re-adjust the socks, but they were really stinging badly. Of course there was the fatigue too, and that stabbing pain in my ass that everyone seems to think is sciatica. With Ray there, though, I seemed to be doing okay. We talked about old war stories, and I told him about Chrissy, and Anne (who I'll tell you guys about soon), Cunt on a pink bike, and Grandpa. "You tell these stories about wanting to trip people and then kick dirt in their face," Ray said to me, "but you seem like such a sweet, angelic little thing."
"Angelic?!" I said. "I don't think anyone who knows me would describe me as SWEET, but thanks."


We came up the hill and there was a group of people there to cheer us on. "I'm finishing this lap, and then I'm never running another step in my life!" I said.
"Aw, you'll be out here again next week!" one of the guys said. They always think they know fucking everything, don't they? What are they? Psychics? What if I never DO run again, huh? Why do they think that NOW is the time to remind me that I will ever have to run again?
"Never again!" I said.
"You'll be back!" a woman said.
"Screw you!" I called over my shoulder. I said it with a big smile and they all laughed.
"See? You can get away with saying things like that," Ray said. "It's that angelic little face of yours."
"Believe me, angelic or not, I don't always get away with it," I said.

The truth was that I knew that I was never, ever going to have to do this again for as long as I lived if I didn't want to, and that made it bearable. If I had known that this was all a step towards another, longer race then I would have hated every second of it. But as it was, I was... surprisingly... in my happy place. Okay, maybe not my happy place, but I didn't wish I was dead. That was huge.

Ray and I passed the marathon mark in just over 5 hours on the clock, which was about 4:45 of real running time. I was aware that this was only a couple of minutes off my old marathon PR. God, I really HAD come a long way since Cape Cod 10 months ago. Right around then Ray started flagging, right when I got my second wind that would take me to the finish. We had picked up Susan at that point, so I didn't feel so bad pulling ahead on a slight uphill when they decided to walk.

Okay, now here's the crazy part: every single person that I'd talked to along the course had ultimately wound up behind me: Rosemary, Mark, Brooke, Susan, Ray, the woman with the Midwestern accent... Even the fast guy with the easy laugh had wound up falling back in a sense. That NEVER happens, I am always the one that is left behind. I've come to expect it. When I passed Brooke's mom in the final 5K (she had been ahead of me the whole race), I couldn't believe it. I was finishing strong! I knew I had a slight chance of breaking 6 hours. It wouldn't be a PR by much, only 3 and a half minutes faster than the last time, but it was something to shoot for.

At Pineland Farms 50K I'd been paced every step of the way by Jay. Now it felt pretty significant that I was doing this on my own. I was going to have to average sub-10-minute miles for the last 5K to break 6 hours, so I dug deep. My body wasn't really cooperating, but I thought about how running a 9:50 mile now was a hell of a lot better than running 7-minute miles behind Michelle as I peed my pants. So I sucked it up and ran hard.

In the last mile (which was flat), I tried to push the pace even more, and was surprised to find that it hurt to breathe. Was I... out of breath? Was I running hard enough to ACTUALLY be pushing my threshold?! I looked at my wrist, I was only running in the high 9's. My body and lungs were just SO tired, that keeping me at below a 10-minute pace right now was as hard as running 2 minutes faster under normal circumstances. Then again, it kind of hurt all over, so it was hard to tell. I wanted to let up so badly, but I also just wanted to be DONE.

The expression "gone-burger" popped into my head. That's how I felt. I don't even know where I heard it, but there it was bouncing around in my mind as I waddled up the final rise to the finish as fast as I could in 6:01:03 (sprinting at 9:05 pace). One minute and three seconds. Oh well.

I tended to some immediate needs: water, pretzels, taking my shoes off, and then I limped down to the beach to sit in the water for a few minutes before I showered. When I got back, fully dressed but not moving any faster, I got a gigantic plate of pasta and set about eating whatever the hell I wanted. When I went up for my second plate, Mark (the man in the red shorts from my first two laps), who was done by now, called me a pig. Whatever, dude. Today I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted.

As I got up to go and thank all the volunteers a man walked up to me. "Are you one of the women that didn't get her prize?" he asked.
"What? I got my finisher's patch," I said. This is a running race. Claires don't win prizes at running races. Claires don't even bother to check the results.
"What's your name?"
"Claire Badas..."
"Claire?! From Boston?!" This was Todd, the race director who had been so patient with me!
I gave him a hug. He looked so happy to see me, that it seemed like the appropriate reaction. "Thank you so much for bending the rules for me..."
He cut me off and put his finger to his lips. "Ssssshhhhhh!"
"Okay, well thank you for all you've done. This really has been such an enjoyable... no, that's not the word... This has been such a positive experience!"
He looked down at his clipboard. "You got second in your category!" he said.
"WHAT?!?!?! Where were the other women?! Did they die?!?!?!" Like I said, Claires don't win running races.
"Don't say that," another volunteer said. "We already found one guy on the ground today." I wonder what the story was with that.
"Is this one of those things where there were only 2 people in my division?" I asked.
Nope. I was the second of 5 women under 35, and 4th of 14 women overall. True, it wasn't a very deep field, but I repeat, Claires don't win running races. Okay, I didn't win, but I placed. Claires don't place in running races.

I won a backpack!

Todd, the world's kindest race director congratulated me, and even printed up google directions for me to get back to the highway. You might think that this story is leading to the conclusion that I'm going to keep going with this ultrarunning business. Nope. I had a really great day, everything seemed to go right, and I felt like it was enough to make up for my DNF. I'd pushed hard, I'd gone long, I'd even done well in the overall standings. And this was exactly the high note I wanted to leave off on. I won't say I'm never running longer than 26.2 miles again. I'm just saying that there'll be plenty of time for that when I'm old and slow and suck at EVERYTHING as much as I suck at running. For now, I'm going to pursue the stuff that I like.

The traffic sucked on the way home, which sucked my whole good mood. What was a 5-hour drive on the way out turned out to be a 7-hour drive on the way back and my legs totally cramped up. Today I am one hurt unit. I'll have more to say about accomplishment soon, I think. But for today, I'm TRYING to keep it short.